


Wining in the rain

by calysto1395



Series: Paranormal Nein [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: First Meeting, Gen, Modern AU, Nott's backstory, Paranormal AU, Supernatural Elements, mention of baby eating, mixed with D&D Rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18621019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calysto1395/pseuds/calysto1395
Summary: It's Nott's first meeting in the big city.





	Wining in the rain

She shouldn’t be here. A big city was no place for a goblin. A goblin belonged in the woods, in caves, hidden away in the shadows, or just on the fringe of human civilization so that they could strike at night and eat your children. 

 

But she wasn’t a goblin. Not really. 

 

Zadash was as far away from Felderwin as she could travel on foot, and as close to it as she dared. 

 

It was easier to disappear in a big city.

 

The twisting streets were bustling with people all concerned with themselves, too busy to notice a moving shadow slinking around the high walls of the buildings and around the corners.

 

Not to mention, big cities had a lot of trash. 

 

It was behind a dumpster of a pizzeria that Nott the Brave remembered that Veth Bernatto had once despised mushrooms. She held a slice from the trashcan, peppered with pieces of mushrooms in her hands, almost untouched except for the rain and the reeking smell of garbage. 

 

Nott didn’t have the luxury of preferences. Nott knew what it was like to hungry- really hungry. Not the passing feeling of hunger on a day too busy to sit down and have a meal but the hunger that made one nauseous with yearning. Mushrooms weren’t half as bad when one had live rats to compare to or the thought of devouring the fresh meat of a human baby- 

 

She scarved down the entire pizza in the shadow of the alleyway while soaked to the bone. 

 

Nott didn’t bother to wipe her face, the rain would wash it away eventually. She huddled closer to the side of the building, hoping to catch a reprieve from the wet and shivered. 

 

Tired, wet and cold, she could only think about how warm the piles of sleeping goblin had been that she had left behind. She shook her head against the thought. She had handled worse. She could handle the cold. 

 

Especially with a little help. She dug around in her small bag, stolen off a street market stand that had sold handmade ones. Many of them had been dyed with intricate designs and the brightest most beautiful colors. Nott had had enough time to grab one of the unfinished plain ones. It was originally a shade of tan but by now it was grey and brown with mud and dirt. All the better. She didn’t deserve nice things. This was functional. 

 

Enough to hold a bottle of liquor. 

 

One grocery shipment to a restaurant insufficiently guarded and Nott had finally managed to steal a bottle of wine. Later she had heard someone shout at someone for the stolen goods but she hadn’t been able to care. 

 

She hadn’t been able to have a drop of alcohol to drink since she left the goblins and their moonshine. 

 

She ripped at the wrapping around the neck of the bottle. It came apart easy under her claws. The cork she had to get more creative with, but it was simple enough if one didn’t care if chunks of it made it into the liquid. 

 

The first taste of it on her tongue was blissful. 

 

The taste of muddy creek water and the fear of death washed away with the dry taste of the alcohol. With what little she had had to eat and her smaller body, it only took a few sips for her head to cloud over comfortably. 

 

It was a day better than most that she had had in recent memory. She had fed, drank, and had seen no other goblin, nor had another creature seen her. If only the rain would stop. 

 

The sky had been overcast all day and into the night. It made the streets less crowded and harder to hide in, but people also tended to be less careful, hurrying from place to place to find a dry spot, easier to steal from. 

 

Maybe that was also why she hadn’t noticed him sooner. 

 

At first, she thought it was just a pile of trash left in the shadow of the dumpster opposite the one she had been using. Until a flash of lightning far away painted quick harsh light on the corner, revealing it to be a human form. Nott flinched at the thunder following. The figure didn’t move. A slumped heap of a big dirty coat, ratty red hair on the top, plastered to a human head and dark from the rain. 

 

A corpse? 

 

Nott crept closer, keeping her wine clutched in her hand. She couldn’t smell any rot, but with the stank of the garbage and the rain, it was hard to tell. Maybe a homeless person that had simply fallen asleep and not woken up again. 

 

Maybe they had something useful on them. 

 

Her fingers itched to take the big coat and go through their pockets. Something to shield away the rain, something to keep busy with. She was close enough to touch and see that the coat was a faded leather when the corpse moved. 

 

Nott jumped back with a shout, spilling her wine but still clutching the bottle as her spine met the house wall. 

 

The pile shifted and from underneath wet red hair, a face peeked out. He was definitely alive. The coat pulled tighter around a body and tired blue eyes glanced at her with apathy. 

 

They stared at each other in silent paralysis, deer caught in headlights.

 

He didn’t scream, didn’t run, didn’t throw things at her. Simply watched her from his side of the alley, unmoving save for the shivering. She had never seen a person unfazed and seemingly unbothered by her presence. 

 

She lifted the hand not clutched around the bottle in a wave. 

 

It took a few seconds but the mess of coat moved to reveal a hand eventually, returning the wave. The hand was almost bone thin, the ripped glove clinging to it like cloth on naked tree branches. 

 

“Hi,” she said tentatively, her voice scratchy and rough from disuse. Her tongue almost felt clumsy over the simply common word, too used to the hard sounds of the goblin’s language. 

 

“Hello.” The man replied, his voice equally rough, but still softer than hers. Something about the way he pronounced the word made her think it was foreign, but maybe it was just her imagination. 

 

“You-you're not afraid?” She felt compelled to ask. 

 

The man shifted, eyes darting around and away from her. “Should I be?” He asked with a hint of panic in his voice. 

 

“I mean-” Nott gestured vaguely to herself. Small and vile goblin body, barely covered by some ragged clothing. Her hair, now green and dark, stringy tendrils in her face. “I’m a goblin.” She said, the words like poison on her tongue. 

 

His eyes focused back on her and he nodded.

 

“I’ve read about your kind.” He said. 

 

“So. You know. What they’re like.” She said, slumping down against the wall. The bottle called to her, and she didn’t hesitate to follow its call. 

 

“There are very few things I know for certain.” He said when the silence stretched too far. He shifted again, hand disappearing in his coat once more. 

 

She looked at him. “Are you human?” She asked. There were no horns, so he couldn’t be a tiefling. The skin was too pale for an orc, but she couldn’t see his ears under the curtain of his hair. It was hard to tell how big he was underneath his cover. She wondered if maybe he was a halfling. 

 

“Barely.” He said, shifting once more. She wasn’t sure if he was uncomfortable with his seating or with their conversation. 

 

“I’m barely a goblin.” She said, looking at her hands. If she closed her eyes she could pretend they were brown instead of green, the little scar from when she had cut herself on broken glass in Yeza’s lab on her index finger, rings and bracelets wrapped around until they jingled when she so much as breathed. When she opened her eyes they were still green and empty and still hers. 

 

“Very different, from what I’ve read, at any rate.” The man muttered. 

 

“Yeah. It’s why I left.” She said. Her voice different and the same. Scratchy and coarse and buried somewhere underneath Veth. Veth but not. Just Nott. Not halfing, not goblin. Nothing.

 

The man hummed and gave her a sympathetic glance. It was the kindest expression she had seen directed at her in a long time. She hadn’t realized how deprived she had been.   

 

She got up and approached again, extending her free hand.

 

“I’m Nott. Nott the Brave.” 

 

He looked at her hand for a moment, hesitating and before Nott could stop her mind she told herself, of course, he wouldn’t want to touch a disgusting goblin like herself. But his coat shifted and from under the soaked material out came his hand again. He took her hand with his own, unafraid. His was only a little bigger than hers. 

 

“Caleb.” He said, slowly. Cautiously. As if speaking it aloud for the first time. 

 

They shook hands in the alley as if they were real people. 

 

She couldn’t remember the last time she had done it.

 

“Widogast. Caleb Widogast.” He added as an afterthought. As if he had forgotten his own name. Veth could relate. 

 

“Nice to meet you Caleb.”, she said and meant every word. “I have some more wine.” She lifted the bottle, likely half rainwater half liquor by now. 

 

He took a sip from the bottle anyway. Not hesitating to put his mouth where that of a goblin had been before. “Thank you.” Caleb gave her the bottle back and moved aside. It was drier than the rest of the alley, an overshoot of roof giving a little shelter. She scurried up next to him quickly. Every other drop of rain still hit her but it was easier to imagine herself dry when she wasn’t being pelted all the time. 

 

“I don’t have much, but-” He said and brought up both his hands between them. 

 

Caleb moved his fingers in a determined pattern and muttered something in a language even more foreign to her than the common she had missed for months. A small spark, like the flint of a lighter and suddenly a flame. 

 

A small warm flame set on his cupped hands like it would on the wick of a candle. She held her freezing hand up to in awe and desperation to get closer. 

 

“You can do magic?” She asked, the bottle of wine sitting forgotten next to her, so she could put both hands closer to the warmth. Nott didn’t question the act itself. She was no stranger to magic anymore. No longer was it a fairy tale she told Luke about at bedtime before she had seen it do more heinous acts than offer comfort in a cold night. 

 

“Just a little,” Caleb said, eyes transfixed on the flame between his hands. His fingertips had darkened with soot. “I’m learning.” 

 

The flame was careful not to hurt, but she could see it straining to burst from his hands. He held it like a precious jewel, something to be revered but his eyes were distant and unfocused as if he weren’t here with her anymore. 

 

“It’s amazing.” She said in earnest and put on of her hands on his spindly wrist, ignoring the silver of dirty bandages showing underneath the sleeve of his coat. 

 

He held the flame until she started to nod off, slumping against him in exhaustion. The fire flickered into the sky, up between the gap in the buildings and fizzled out against the black clouds. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks as always to my wonderful beta EchoedMusic for beta-ing and for the inspiration for the title <3


End file.
